For the 29,000 patients in the United States with metastatic colorectal cancer, chemotherapy with irinotecan is a standard treatment that has been shown to improve survival. But for more than one in 10 of these patients, a variation in their DNA means that this treatment could result in a severe reduction in their white blood cell count, leading to a high risk of bacterial infection and possible subsequent death.

Though a high-fiber diet has long been considered good for you and beneficial in staving off colon cancer, Medical College of Georgia researchers have discovered a reason why: roughage activates a receptor with cancer-killing potential.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic campus in Florida have found that a drug now being tested to treat a range of human cancers significantly inhibited colon cancer development in mice.

Scientists who study how human chemistry can permanently turn off genes have typically focused on small islands of DNA believed to contain most of the chemical alterations involved in those switches.

Researchers led by Dr. Brian Iritani at The University of Washington found that mice that lack the immune inhibitory molecule Smad3 are acutely sensitive to both bacterially-induced inflammation and cancer. They report these findings in the January 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) believe they may be one step closer to understanding how certain forms of colon cancer develop.

Spontaneous perforation of the colon is defined as a sudden perforation of the normal colon without any diseases such as tumor external injury. It is rare, often misdiagnosed and has a high mortality rate.

Researchers at NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore) and Northwestern University have discovered that fiber optic technology can for the very first time effectively measure blood levels in the colonic lining (mucosa) in humans, thus having potential applications for analyzing risk of colon cancer.

A team of scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), a research institute of the Asian city-state's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), and the University of California at San Francisco have developed a pharmacological approach to kill colon cancer cells.

Recent work from the Finnish Academy Center of Excellence on Cancer Biology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, has shed light on the mechanisms of colon tumor development and may help to design better treatment for this disease.

Using a combination of a targeted cancer-fighting agent called DFMO and a low dose of an anti-inflammatory drug, UC Irvine researchers have reduced the risk of reoccurring colorectal polyps, an early sign of colon cancer, by as much as 95 percent with fewer toxic side effects.

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) has found evidence that supports gender-related differences in the development and survival of metastatic colon cancer.